Chapter 11 - THE THREAT AGAINST MY BROTHER
Ethan didn't look frightened.
He looked furious.
“She was outside my apartment yesterday.”
Nathan stepped forward.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I thought I was imagining things.”
He opened another message.
“She said she knew something about my adoption.”
I stared at him.
“You knew you were adopted?”
Ethan nodded.
“Dad told me when I was little. But I never knew who my biological parents were.”
His voice broke slightly.
“I never imagined I had a sister.”
I began crying again.
Ethan stepped closer.
“Can I hug you?”
I nodded.
He wrapped his arms around me.
And suddenly I was holding someone who smelled faintly of coffee and laundry detergent, someone who had my mother's gentle smile.
My little brother.
Alive.
Safe.
For that moment, nothing else mattered.
Then Nathan's phone rang.
Marcus.
“Boss, we have a problem.”
Nathan put the call on speaker.
“Tell me.”
“Victoria and Julian have disappeared from their downtown office.”
Investigator Brooks had already received the same information.
Federal agents were searching several properties connected to their financial network.
But Victoria had left one final message.
A recording.
Nathan played it.
Victoria's voice filled the room.
“Hello, Nathan.”
He closed his eyes.
“You always were sentimental.”
Ethan tightened his grip on my hand.
Victoria continued.
“You thought you were saving a helpless child. You never understood why I brought Ethan into your home.”
Nathan's face hardened.
“Why?” he muttered.
The recording continued.
“His father had evidence. Hannah had evidence. And one day, the children might have inherited it.”
I swallowed.
“So you kept Ethan close,” I whispered.
Nathan nodded grimly.
Victoria laughed in the recording.
“I needed to know where the last copy was hidden.”
Then her voice became colder.
“Samuel Carter left something behind. Something that could destroy everything Julian and I built.”
I looked at Ethan.
He shook his head.
“I don't know anything.”
Then Victoria delivered her final message.
“The answer has been inside Nathan's house for twenty-three years.”
The recording ended.
Silence filled the room.
Nathan stared toward the window.
Then he turned sharply.
“Ethan.”
My brother looked up.
“What?”
Nathan swallowed.
“When you were a baby, Victoria insisted you keep one particular toy.”
Ethan frowned.
“My old stuffed bear?”
Nathan nodded.
“She said it belonged to your birth mother.”
I looked between them.
“Where is it?”
Ethan hesitated.
“In the storage room at Dad's house.”
Nathan's face changed.
May you like
Because the bear had been sitting inside his Chicago mansion for more than two decades.
And nobody had ever thought to look inside it.
